The business value of skills intelligence is clear. Enterprises are using verified skills data to help their employees advance in their careers and accelerate learning velocity — especially for AI skills.
We’re now seeing skills-based organizations prioritize verified skills over degrees or seniority when hiring people, structuring teams, assigning tasks, and driving business strategy. It’s a new way to think about talent development: one that’s paying dividends for the organizations that are adopting the model.
But where do you start with skills intelligence? Establishing a future-fit learning strategy can seem overwhelming, and employees are often wary of change.
This article will lay out the steps you can take to make the transition easy, set yourself up for success, and put your company on the path to an AI-ready workforce.
Integrating Workera’s verified skills intelligence into your existing tech stack is simple
Let’s start with the nuts and bolts. To truly understand your workforce, you need access to the right data and a platform that offers real-time insights.
Adding Workera to your existing technology stack is simple. First, companies must align on how their users will be added to and access the platform. Options include a Workday integration, comma-separated values (CSV), or via the Workera admin panel. Auto-provisioning via SSO is also available.
The next step is integrating content providers. Does your organization have access to paid providers like Coursera and Udemy? Are they available to the entire organization or specific groups? Workera’s content configurations are flexible and ensure users are only recommended learning content that they have access to.
From there, Workera helps you operationalize skills data — aligning it to strategic goals like hiring, mobility, and talent development. CSV reports can be automatically generated on a set cadence and delivered via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).
As Workera supports larger populations within organizations, we recognize the need for our data to be easily accessible and integrated bi-directionally with your tech stack. Our product roadmap features additional human resources information system (HRIS) platforms, applicant tracking systems (ATS), talent marketplaces, and other relevant platforms.
Choosing the right scope to start your skills intelligence journey
One of the primary benefits of verified skills data is that it allows learning and development (L&D) leaders to easily identify skills gaps, strengths, and areas for improvement throughout an entire workforce. You can use these insights to direct your hiring, streamline project staffing, benchmark against competitors, and track the velocity of skill acquisition.
Achieving that enterprise-wide view is crucial to unlocking the full value of skills intelligence. That’s why it’s important to apply the framework widely from the start, rather than choosing a too-narrow scope that won’t keep pace with evolving skill demands — or your competitors.
At Workera, we recommend an initial proof-of-concept or internal test of the technology, then performing a diagnostic across your organization. Measure everyone’s skills using objective, AI-powered assessments up front so you know where their strengths lie and where there are gaps you’ll need to address with personalized learning pathways. Your finance department will likely have different needs than your sales team — and each of those can be solved with custom domains — but it’s important to understand your workforce as a whole from the start.
If your initial scope is too small, you may never scale your skills intelligence enough to turn the insights into action.
Applying skills intelligence data
Now it’s time to act on all that data.
When a company integrates with Workera, the first source of truth is the enterprise dashboard in our database. You can view the raw data via downloadable CSVs or SFTP, or the data can flow into your own internal business intelligence dashboards. Alternatively, companies can connect Workera’s insights to their Workday skills profiles and have those serve as the company’s source of truth.
Ultimately, enterprises that use Workera have full control over their skills intelligence. We provide best-in-class dashboards that surface real-time insights, and our platform connects to in-house dashboards and Workday profiles if your team elects for that approach instead.
Either way, your organization will have the verified skills data it needs to make informed decisions for talent strategies while improving employee engagement and retention.
Building organizational buy-in for skills intelligence
Of course, the most important step in getting started with skills intelligence is securing buy-in from your employees. Workera’s platform is built to achieve that goal, and we’ve identified several best practices over the years that have helped other organizations.
On the Workera side, we aim to reinforce psychological safety, provide personalized learning paths, and build a learning-first (not performance-based) culture. Our AI mentor:
- Uses growth-oriented language (“insights” instead of “grades”)
- Avoids terms like “pass/fail” or “ranking” unless anonymized or used for benchmarking at the organizational level
- Provides targeted upskilling recommendations — content, conversations, or curated learning paths — after each assessment
- Allows employees to retake focused assessments over time to measure progress without penalty
- Highlights stories of upskilling journeys and team capability building, not individual rankings
We recommend that organizations set a strategic program intention, build trust and transparency, recognize and reward learning progress, and protect time for upskilling. The enterprises with the highest learning velocity often:
- Develop quantifiable success criteria to focus the program on what is most effective and relevant for the business
- Frame assessments as opportunities to reflect, discover, and improve—not as gates or job requirements
- Reinforce that learning and growth are expected — even for senior leaders
- Gamify the program with engagement and program completion challenges to incentivize employees to participate
- Allocate regular time (such as two hours per month) for employees to reflect, assess, and engage with recommended learning
Ensuring that skills intelligence remains a trusted, growth-first experience depends on how it is rolled out and embedded in your company culture. By following these best practices, enterprises can put their skills data to work and unlock the full potential of their workforce.
